92 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



Zemla from the mainland for summer hunting, re- 

 turning as they came when the winter closes in. 

 Stray families may sometimes winter in 2sTova Zemla 

 in other places beside Karmakula and indeed I 

 know that a family has lived for several years past 

 on the west coast of Goose Land ; but these cannot 

 be called permanent settlements, and a castaway 

 crew could not depend upon finding them. 



The Samoyedes do not as yet appear to have been 

 to any extent converted to Christianity, their religion 

 being a worship of rudely executed idols. " The 

 worst and the most unartificiall worke that ever I 

 saw," says Stephen Burrough, in 1556 ; and goes on to 

 say, " some of their idols were an old sticke with two 

 or three notches made with a knife in it." Most of 

 them are better than that, however, " in the shape of 

 men, women, and children very grossly wrought;" 

 and to these they offer sacrifice of various animals, 

 smearing the notches, which represent the mouths of 

 their gods, with the blood of the victims. The 

 Olympus of the Samoyede deities appears to be 

 Vaygats Island, between ]N"ova Zemla and the main- 

 land, where large plantations of those divinities are 

 stuck in the ground. As to the sacrifices, Stephen 

 Burrough remarks : " There was one of their sleds 

 broken and lay by the heape of idols, and there I 

 saw a deeres skinne, which the foules had spoyled : 

 and before certaine of their idols blocks were made 

 as high as their mouthes, being all bloody ; I thought 



